Wow. That actually was a pretty good twist in the storyline, providing a justification for the stuff everyone hated the king and wanted him dethroned for. Too bad they had to royally fuck it up by deciding he was still evil for doing it. I mean, really, what the hell. I can only assume this came from the gameplay mechanics designers and the writers working separately with no communication between them.

I find most epic fantasy in general to have fascist undercurrents, of the kind satirized by Norman Spinrad in The Iron Dream. Another reason I appreciated Dragon Age so much: the king-making is a necessary evil so you get on with your mission to save the world, and even then you get your choice of regicidal paranoid xenophobe, rudderless whiny emo bastard, and deceitful opportunistic bitch.

But it sounds like the Fable III final choice had so much storytelling potential that was just squandered. Ah well, another reason I never need to own a 360.

Sounds a bit better than Fable 2 but the end choices make it worse... oy...... you'd think by now Bethesda, bioware and lord god Peter M would have realized that a 2 choice pathing system for stories just blows.

Okysho:lol wow seriously? I guess I don't have to look into this one either then.

I played the first fable and it really wasn't very good... I played a bit of fable 2, but it was crap... Thanks Yahtzee!

Same here. Luckily I borrow Fable 1 TLC from a friend and recognized the horrible game it was. Since then I have just followed all the others releases through the press. 0:25 to 0:50 of the review covers my take on the franchise. I keep hearing "good" stuff about them so I look up reviews and they are "good" technically by score but all of the features in them I hated in 1 are now there and more pronounced in the latest sequel be it 2 or 3. I don't get how these games score so highly.

Yeah, the time jump kinda caught me by surprise, too. I was only a few rent payments away from having the 6 million, but even with the final portal waiting for me to enter, I can still just let the game sit, collect the cash, pause to the Sanctuary, and drop the gold in the treasury from there. Hazaa, I saved everyone with the good ending.

Even though the description for the achievement was written by someone that expected only evil asses to get it. I had all but the lakefront homes on Low rent and most shops on low, too. I never had any on high, so I was a shining beacon of sunshine and happiness as far as anyone cared. Really, what's the big deal? Oh no, I have to donate my gold to save everyone? There goes my condom cash. I already bought every property in the world by the time I became King and seemed to have a world where the weapon shops were populated by evil blacksmiths, so I wasn't motivated to buy anything with all the gold flooding into my pockets.

EDIT: Really, I think Molyneaux makes games in character interaction for years and at the end of development realizes he forgot to make an ending with all the time spend designing holding people's hands.

sdgilbert:They need to make these games more balanced, the magic was still the only ability that you should ever use in this game, again. Also I'm surprised, Yahtzee you didn't mention the COMPLETELY messed up menu system. It takes five times as long to do anything now.

THANK YOU! Will someone PLEASE explain to me why they thought it was a good idea to make the character go back to the sanctuary just to check his inventory?

I knew well ahead of time before playing the game about the ill-concieved "faux-Cthulhu entity", and I still couldn't believe the developers went to such a common denominator for story. And Fable 3 further compounds my hatred for "'evil' decisions give better, and more sensible rewards than 'good'" games.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again; if Molyneux wanted to make a sim, he should just make a f*cking sim. Quit jerking around with mediocre action/adventure/RPGs.

Edit: If I were to give the game any merit, it does go about the NPC interactions much better than in the second game. I could do without holding the button to open the door, though. Seriously, why?

tried playing this while thinking "ok, they have had two games before this to iron out the kinks". 2 hours later i started my 3rd playthrough of Mass Effect 2 cause i wanted more choice. when a game convinces me to play another game, thats usually not a point in its favor.

but at least this one shows signs of Peter learning the value of a plot twist.

Not sure if its just me but Fable 3 Felt more restrictive than Fable 2, and the bloody weapon upgrade requirements were just absurd. Did feel like the story just ended rather abruptly though, as much as I was unimpressed with Fable 3, it did still feel too short, very much like the rest I suppose. Trouble is now that Yahtzee mentioned that Mark Heap was in it ill have to play it again to find his voice, one of the most underrated actors in the uk along with Kevin Eldon in my opinion.

I tried the exact same approach to raising the money I needed (I tried blacksmithing at first, then realised that it actually makes less money and was more difficult to get multipliers than lute playing) for the final battle. And I too, got caught out in exactly the same way. The only way my case was any different was the fact that no one was celebrating at all. And yeah, from the ending was kinda rubbish too. A sound review indeed.

I am surprised he didn't bring up the tedious and rather silly hand holding system in the review that Lionhead tried to make all the rave back in E3.

And the extremely limp wristed ending that is akin to the ending of Fable 1, little difference or meaning between the two.

EDIT: Oh and the horrible f#$%ing housing system where I have to individually repair each and every home, help my inept guards capture criminals (I am royalty dammit!), and get asked to go on missions when I sit, blink and wonder where the command for "unleash my Sardaukar troopers" is. Oh yeah...and why oh why can I not kill, arrest or banish Reaver?? WHY?!?!

Funny review right up until you started with the liberal and conservative crap. Please please don't fall in with the characterizations so common in the US. Liberals would not say lets all get drunk and have fun till the apocalypse and conservatives would not become evil overlords to save us all. They'd just try to negotiate a better price for them selves to be saved..screw the rest of us. But seriously I am so tired of those two terms.

Jonci:Even though the description for the achievement was written by someone that expected only evil asses to get it. I had all but the lakefront homes on Low rent and most shops on low, too. I never had any on high, so I was a shining beacon of sunshine and happiness as far as anyone cared.

Apparently, keeping your promises to the people while paying for EVERYTHING out of your own pocket is SUCH a good thing to do that you can buy every property in the game, make every evil decision possible up to that point and still end up with Angelic Wings and perfect, happy, peppy people.

I love it when Yahtzee makes some uber strong and valid points about the games he is reviewing.Seriously how is getting money to LIVE an act of EVIL???? :OIF the population knew what was gona happen they`d freaking throw their money at him....Anyway this was one of my favorite episodes :)) seems to me yahtzee is going back on track :P

Definitely agree that performing fetch quests to make friends is asinine.Also, I managed to pull off the real-estate magnate plan to save everyone. On the real-estate note, having to go around and individually repair your properties was a giant PITA. It was just too much trouble to have a "Repair all" button? Even if you did it zone by zone, it would have saved me TONS of time. I like how he didn't even mention all of the little glitches. Screw you, randomly shifting golden trail!I still enjoyed the game, though not as much as Fable II.

They really need to come up with moral choice systems that don't use the words GOOD and EVIL or any of the synonyms. Good/Bad, rightous/evil, paragon/renegade, sunshine-flowers/darkness-sins of the flesh. i don't think these cover all the bases... Wait let me restate; We know these do not cover all the bases. Moral choice meters and moral choices are a good thing to have but i think they need to more than binary. i think there are many way to implement a system i think game developers are being lazy.

example Respect | |Rightous----|----Evil | | Fear

See? came up with that in less than five minutes. as a king or ruler or leader or whatever this should be your meter... in fact this should be your meter as any famous adventurer person with access to guns, swords, area of offense spells, biotics, or massed forces of destruction. And even more so you add a Z axis and/or an alpha axis (i think thats what a four dimensional axis is called, honestly idk). I don't know i'm no game designer but i feel that by simply adding another axis to a moral choice meter would make stuff more deep open and less idiotic.

I went through lives and STDs like an alcoholic through the hotels mini bar in the second one, the third one kind of seemed cookie cutter and I got bored with this fable franchise after they introduced guns. I kind of assumed my character in Fable 2 died of some horrible venereal monstrosity before he could consolidate his power and keep the bandits from charging in and taking over. So it's obviously the bandit's problems now.

The moral choices were not exactly difficult or thought provoking. Press 'A' for shining good angel wings choice or press 'X' for firey bad evil choice. When you become King it becomes A for the short sighted penniless and naive philanthropist or X for the rich, goal orientated bad actions for a good cause kind of person.

The menu system was annoying too because I had to access everything to find out what it does. Most of it just does nothing. When the butler stopped talking I decided that enough was enough and gave up on the side quests.

That quest where you play an RPG inside an RPG (a rather questionable one right now) is funny and well designed and self depreciating etc etc but the others were very boring.

Why not make the NPCs not all have an addiction to hats? When everyone looks the same its quite pointless to purposefully single one out as the one who gets your attention, except when you have a rifle.

Every single Peter Molyneux game is absolutely overrated. He, and his works, seem to be judged by perception of what they are or should be and not by the actual result.

The Black and White series sucked, not because of the concept but because of the poor execution. The Fable series sucks, again it's not an issue of concept but of execution.

And that is Peters problem. He cannot properly execute his ideas. Maybe he is years ahead of the technology, but that's not really an excuse because it still leads to poorly executed final products. His games are the sort that you really really want to be good so you just pretend they are as good as you want them to be or as everyone else is pretending they are.